Thursday, February 21, 2013

The prehistoric discoveries they have made on the banks of a
long-lost lake on the Parc Glyndwr development site off Rockfield Road,
Monmouth.

The latest radiocarbon dates. It looks as though the site is
teeming with prehistoric remains, especially Bronze Age ones (we have found
another burnt mound 50 yards away, just outside the development site) . . .

We were particularly careful with the charcoal sample from
one of the slots - taking it as far from the mound as possible and inside the
lower anaerobic clay; of course it's not absolute proof that it's not from the
burnt mound but we are sure that the slot was cut into the surface of the mound
when there was little, if any, covering soil - this is also clear in the
section which would clearly show if the slot was cut from higher up. The date
from inside the slot is earlier than that from the mound but with the 35 years
each way I suppose that it comes out near enough the same. So far, the evidence
is that the slots could be Bronze Age with not a scrap of evidence for Roman,
as published by someone from Cadw, following a 10-minute visit to the site!

Gordon MacDonald's suggestion that there was access to the
River Wye in the Bronze Age via a large post-glacial lake may not be so dodgy
as I first thought. We have a water-worn Beaker barbed & tanged arrowhead
from river gravels at 24 Monnow Street and the Mesolithic camp site on what
appears to be a river bank in St. James' Street, both of these sites are just
above the alluvium which would apparently be the edge of such a lake. The
alluvium does connect our site to the rivers and Gordon, who has studied the
Wye and Severn for many years, is convinced that the remains are linked to the
building of the known huge Bronze Age boats. However, perhaps I will hold fire
on that for the moment as there has been rather a lot of theorising - for now.
The little Neolithic hearth had a loose stone surround and contained charcoal
and a flint.